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The Florists' Review 



Mahch 5, 1914. 



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EARLY FLOWERING SPENCERS. 



-I 



As Compared with Orandifloras. 



Now that the indoor flowering sea- 

 son of sweet peas is with us, a few ob- 

 servations may be of interest to those 

 who are growing, as well as to those 

 who intend to grow, these new and ad- 

 vanced varieties. 



Most growers must have felt dis- 

 appointed with the grandifloras that 

 they have been obliged to grow up to 

 the present. It cannot be an encour- 

 aging experience, after giving the 

 plants good culture, to find only one 

 or two blooms on a stem, often poor, 

 miserable, deformed things at that. 

 Some may say, "Yes, but look at thd 

 beautiful long stems, eighteen to twen- 

 ty inches long." To me these poor, 

 lonely, isolated little blooms are only 

 shown to greater disadvantage by the 

 length of stemj Of course, the raisers 

 of these new JSpencers will have im- 

 proved stocks iof the grandifloras, be- 

 sides greater variety in color, and the 

 seed of these may be offered at a lower 

 price, as they seed far more freely 

 than the Spencers will ever -do. The 

 waviness of the latter prevents the pol- 

 len from being held up to the pistil, 

 thus causing a good many flowers to 

 fail to set their seed. 



Superiority of the Spencers. 



But if you try to compare the grandi- 

 floras with the Spencers as florists' 

 flowers, you must soon come to the con- 

 clusion that, as the saying goes, "there 

 is no comparison," since the Spencers 

 produce much larger blooms and three 

 or four pf them on the stem, instead of 

 one or^two. You will also see that the 

 Spencers possess what may be called 

 an art quality that cannot be found in 

 other types. Grown under glass, they 

 are then seen at their best. The colors 

 are clear and in great variety. On fine 

 days the standard goes right back, 

 showing the beautiful crinkled wavi- 

 ness of the flower in all its glory. 



The flowers of the Unwin type are 

 slightly smaller and a little less waved 

 than the Spencers. Gladys Unwin, the 

 first of the kind put on the market, 

 is a typical example of what the Un- 

 win sorts should be. Some varieties 

 sent out as possessing this character 

 fail to show any of the real Unwin 

 traits. Still, the same raisers, with- 

 out doubt, are offering some gems. 



The Price of Spencer Seeds. 



As to, the price of seeds of the new 

 sorts, if $8 an ounce seems a big price 

 to give, let me just mention this as a 

 comforter: I counted the seeds in one 

 of these 8-dollar packets and found 

 the number to be 400; that makes the 

 price 2 cents a seed. The oldest 

 pioneer in sweet pea culture in the old 



country, and one of the largest growers, 

 is offering seeds at 12 cents each, which 

 is about equivalent to $48 an ounce. 

 Two cents a seed has been the average 

 price, I should th'ink, for most of the 

 new Spencers as they have appeared 

 each year. 



To keep in the competing line, grow- 

 ers must handle the ])eat varieties. I 

 was acquainted with a grower in the 

 old country who would not grow the 

 Speq^ers because of the high cost of 

 s6ed. He changed his mind, however, 

 when he had lost his best customer, 

 who' had been in the habit of buying 

 sixty dozen bunches twice a week. He 

 said to me then, "Well, I am going 

 to grow Spencers." I said, "Good! 

 Where are you going to get your 



seed?" "Well," he said, "from So 

 and So, a 2-Qfnt seed firm*" When I 

 saw, his peaii the following j^ear he was 

 still growing grandifloras-^with Spen- 

 cer names on the labels. 



Time and all other expenditures are 

 badly wasted if poor varieties are 

 grown where good ones should be. 



A. A. Elliott. 



wehUman's winter spencers. 



At Maywood, 111., Henry Wehrman 

 has two houses, each 28x375 feet, 

 planted to sweet peas, using seed from 

 A. C. Zvolanek, Lompoc, Cal. The va- 

 rieties are Mr. Zvolanek 's winter- 

 blooming seedlings of the Spencer type 

 and there are on trial a number of 

 colors that Mr. Zvolanek has not yet 

 been able to offer in quantity that 

 would permit of wide distribution. Mr. 

 Wehrman had excellent success in for- 

 mer years growing Zvolanek 's Christ- 

 mas Pink and later sorts of that type 

 and his this season 's crop has been 

 watched with much interest. The ac- 

 companying illustrations show how his 

 houses looked Februajry 26. Because of 

 the long spell of sunless weather the 

 early pick was not so heavy as had 

 been expected, but the day after the 

 photographs were made the pick was 

 14,500. The quality is excellent; the 

 peas are what the trade has been ac- 

 customed to in late spring, when Count- 



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Zvolanek's Winter-blooming Sweet Peas at H. Wehrman's, Maywood, III. 



